Rebel, survivor, pinup, sweetheart, pit bull, rock chick, ice queen: female tennis players sure seem to get labeled a lot. And while that kind of media sizzle makes tournaments like Wimbledon a hot ticket, it doesn't begin to sum up the resilience and power of the sport's biggest stars. Find out what drives the greatest players of the past 40 years, from Billie Jean King to Li Na

Ana Ivanovic

As a teenager in war-torn Yugoslavia, Ana Ivanovic practiced in the early morning to avoid bomb raids. When all the courts were destroyed, she used an abandoned swimming pool. “Tennis was definitely a distraction from the war and all of the bad things that were going on in the country at the time,” she says. “Tennis kept me focused and let me enjoy my childhood and hang out with children my age.” Peace came, and Ivanovic went on to earn the No. 1 ranking after winning the French Open for Serbia in 2008. Since then, she has struggled to maintain form, and fell to No. 65 in July 2010. But the 23-year-old has shown flashes of the greatness that took her to the top: she won two tournaments at the end of 2010, and has clawed her way back to No. 18 entering Wimbledon in 2011. Ivanovic does not credit her wartime experiences for her success: “War made me tougher, and it made me appreciate tennis a bit more, but I think I would have had a talent for tennis no matter where I grew up.”